THE EFFECTS OF BELIEF ON BEHAVIOR
COMPILATION AND COMMENTARY
BY LUCY WARNER
MARCH 11, 2018


THIS TITLE, IS MILITARISM A DISEASE, IS VERY INSIGHTFUL, IN MY VIEW, BECAUSE EVEN THOUGH I WILL SOMETIMES CALL THE STORIES THAT APPEAR IN THE NEWS “EVIL OR SIN,” I STILL CONSIDER THEM TO BE DUE TO POOR MENTAL HEALTH, AND SOMETIMES LITERALLY INSANITY OR LACK OF INTELLIGENCE. WE HAVE EMPHASIZED WAR TO SUCH A DEGREE IN THIS COUNTRY, AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER, THAT THE NUMBER OF PEACEFUL OR CONTEMPLATIVE PEOPLE IS DWINDLING RAPIDLY. UNFORTUNATELY OUR EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM, NEVER PROPERLY BOLSTERED, HAS GIVEN OUT AND MOST OF OUR PEOPLE DON’T DO A LOT OF “THINKING,” OR SYMPATHIZING WITH PEOPLE WHO ARE LESS FORTUNATE.

IN OTHER WORDS, OUR SOCIETY, OUR “GROUP CONSCIENCE,” IS MORE VIOLENT THAN WHEN I WAS YOUNG. WE ARE ACCEPTING MORE VILENESS AS TOLERABLE. THE OLD HATE WORDS BEGINNING WITH N, ETC. WERE THERE, BUT I WASN’T AWARE OF ANY LYNCHINGS OR RACE RIOTS UNTIL MARTIN LUTHER KING WAS SHOT. THAT WAS, AFTER ALL, PREDICTABLE AND EVEN UNDERSTANDABLE.

THIS CHANGE ISN’T SPONTANEOUS, OF COURSE. THE PUTIN INTERNET BOTS AND THE NRA INFLUENCE HAVE BEEN KEY. HOWEVER, THE DISRESPECT FOR LIFE WAS THERE ALREADY. IT WAS A PIT TRAP IN OUR INHERITED SET OF SOCIAL ATTITUDES, AND WE WALKED RIGHT INTO IT. THAT IS BECAUSE OUR MIDDLE CLASS HAS BEEN VERY CERTAIN OF OUR STATUS AND SAFETY FOR TOO LONG. WE WEREN’T ALERT, IN OTHER WORDS. THEN WHEN THE TIME CAME TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE BIZARRE PHENOMENON THAT WAS DONALD TRUMP, WE DIDN’T SEE IT AS A “SERIOUS” PROBLEM. LIBERALS LAUGHED AT HIM, AT LEAST UNTIL NOVEMBER 7, 2017. THE SHOCK IN THE NATION WAS CLEAR THE VERY NEXT MORNING.

ONLY THE REALLY BAD ELEMENTS WEREN’T AFRAID, AND THEY WERE TRULY DELIGHTED. IT WAS DISGUSTING. THE WHITE SUPREMACISTS SHOWED THEMSELVES FREELY, FEELING THAT THEY WERE SAFER TO ACT NOW. IT PASSED THE NATIONAL NOTICE BECAUSE IT WAS, AFTER ALL, OUR NORM. IT WAS EXTREME, YES, BUT FAMILIAR. THAT IS DUE TO OUR OWN LACK OF ATTENTION TO THE BEST OF THE AMERICAN VALUES – EQUALITY AND CONCERN FOR HUMAN LIFE. WE ARE PAYING THE PRICE NOW.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-me-in-we/201604/is-militarism-disease
Molly S. Castelloe Ph.D. Molly S. Castelloe Ph.D.
Is Militarism a Disease?
Violence we live with everyday and don't even notice.
Posted Apr 12, 2016
PROGRESSIVE RADIO NETWORK

A person’s behavior is determined not solely by the individual's personality but also through that individual interaction with his or her environment. Despite the American dream of the self-made man, human agency is not reliant on the individual alone.

In Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Achord Rountree believe the social environment, especially economically-driven incentives, has enormous impact on an individual’s choices and path through life. (The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from Global Violence and War, 2015).

In their view, social institutions inflict violence on people in both direct and indirect ways. Institutional violence assaults us directly, for instance, in the "collateral damage" of contemporary wars, which are distinctive in that 90% of those killed are civilians. Another feature that characterizes today’s warfare is that is not necessarily fought between nation states, but is usually fought over natural resources.

Indirect forms of violence afflict us more insidiously. A pervasive form of indirect violence afflicts the the [sic] international community when transnational corporations exploit the natural resources of poor countries, leaving toxic waste behind and the local people stricken with poverty. The jobs we often here about created for these poor people by large companies are jobs in sweatshops that pay below subsistence level. Pilisuk and Rountree describe conditions of labor abuses in a toy factory in Vietnam making Disney character’s for McDonald’s Happy Meals: poor ventilation, forced overtime, young women’s exposure to chemical toxins that lead to hospitalization and earnings of 6-8 cents per hour (less than is needed to pay for the standard meal in this part of the world, a bowl of rice and vegetables). The same year the CEO from Disney earned $203 million. Indirect violence also occurs, for instance, when costly war preparations erect nuclear plants that compromise the heath of those living near by; increased cancer and birth defects arise around each of America’s 18 nuclear weapons facilities.

A persuasive antiwar critique is launched using extensive data to illustrate how it serves corporate interests not only through the possession of natural resources, but also from gains due to arms development and sales from their weapons’ specialists. Here at home, there is inequity in other ways: government officials and senior military personnel make the decision to declare war while people with less access to education and job opportunity defend the front line. Indeed America is exceptional: our nation develops and supplies the most weapons and also uses the most arms, more than any other nation on earth. These authors describe militarism as a cultural disease. Perhaps we can think of insatiable consumerism as one also. Philosopher Peter Singer calls this the "hedonistic treadmill" of modern times, a constant yearning for the next best thing.

Monetary resources channeled into wars like the one in Iraq could be allocated toward public health and social programs that contribute to improving our countries’ infrastructure, feeding those without food, finding a cure for AIDS, giving shelter to the homeless and providing universal health care. Consider: many of our societal ills such as poverty, climate change, industrialized farming which depletes the soil and had led to the genetic engineering of foods -- are all symptoms of corporate greed. I think of it as corporate narcissism.

Sharon Mallerus/FlkrAndy Warhol's Cambell Soup's Cans, 1962,
Source: Sharon Mallerus/Flkr

“Why is there not public outrage for the wealth inequity in our country?” Pilisuk and Rountree respond: corporations use the mass media monopolies it has owned since the 1980s-90s to convince the public of their benevolent image. In their opinion, journalistic integrity has steadily declined since the use of propaganda in WWI, and the truth has become harder to find in the “information diet” the public is fed. Access to information is a matter of power, and most of us flounder in the “false ‘realities’” that pass as news.

The book tells of reporters from Fox News who quit because they were coerced to take certain political positions with regard to their stories. The authors further assert that even our public media is dominated by corporations through underwriting.

Many politicians, financed by large companies, tell us of the gift of democracy to foreign lands while pillaging the natural resources of these poorer countries with weak labor and environmental laws. Our government proselytizes democracy while perverting it. We in fact have a “shadow government” that speaks a subliminal language: corporate interests masquerade as abstract ideals such as patriotism, service to our country, democracy, freedom, or a certain religious identity.

The media distorts our perceptions, inciting us with fear, for instance over immigrants entering our country, then demonizing an "enemy" people so we can project our fears onto them. Our government then responds by spending billions of dollars militarizing the US border in missions such as operations “Gatekeeper,” “Hold the Line,” and “Return to Sender.” Also recollect the vision of Trump’s "beautiful wall." Anxiety surrounds the notion that we will not only loose [sic] jobs here at home, but also a sense of American identity as we have known it. Thus we must guard against infiltration, contamination.

Cheri Sundra/Flickr
Source: Cheri Sundra/Flickr

“Of the 100 largest economies in the world fifty-one are now not nations, but corporations,” Pilisuk and Rountree confide. The increasing centralized control over the earth’s natural resources and the increasing wealth gap caused by it pose the most debilitating form of indirect violence there is, one that predicts the highest decline in human health and emotional well being within and across countries.

Our future is precarious with the degradation industry wreaks on the environment, with the absence of respect for life, and little belief in spiritual inquiry.

Citing theologian Harvey Cox, the writers suggest that our God today is The Market God, with its fateful "falls," redemptive "corrections," and shrouded mysteries. This deity’s First Commandment: “There is Never Enough.” Cox further notes that this postmodern God is the unseen and quintessential rival of all our world religions. It makes people interchangeable with things in much the same way that our body parts have become commodified: blood, organs, sperm all now carrying price tags. Cox sees this as a “dazzling display of reverse transubstantiation” which characterizes our age of multinational corporations (p. 22). While historically, at the climactic moment of mass, bread and wine are converted into the body of Christ, in our age of turbo capitalism the Market God turns bodies into objects. It cannibalizes its children, sacrificing the values of public good for the interests of corporate shareholders.

Yet Pilisuk and Rountree offer a useful path of remedy, one that begins with acknowledging the troublesome existence of profound global violence. Secondly, keep from demonizing those individuals, groups or states most central to the perpetuation of this violence. Lastly, understand the system and retain hope that a shared awareness and understanding will empower all citizens everywhere to work toward creating a peaceful planet.

REFERENCES

Cox, H, 1999, “The Market as God: Living the New Dispensation,” The Atlantic Monthly, 283:3, 1999, pp. 18-23.

Pilisuk, Mark and Achord Rountree, J, 2015, The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from Global Violence and War, Monthly Review Press, New York.

______________________

www.twitter.com/mollycastelloe




“A JAPANESE ZEN MASTER ONCE SAID TO HIS DISCIPLES AS HE WAS DYING, "I HAVE LEARNED ONLY ONE THING IN LIFE: HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH." HE WOULD FIND NO NICHE IN THE CHAPEL OF THE MARKET, FOR WHOM THE FIRST COMMANDMENT IS "THERE IS NEVER ENOUGH.’”

SITTING IN AN ECONOMICS CLASS AT UNC-CHAPEL HILL IN THE LATE 1960S, I CAME ACROSS THE FAMOUS REFERENCE TO “THE INVISIBLE HAND” OF “THE MARKET,” AND ADAM SMITH’S RHAPSODIZING ABOUT THE PURE JUDGMENT OF “THE MARKET.” THAT HORRIFIED ME. IT CLEARLY WAS SAYING THAT GOD (WHAT OTHER INVISIBLE POWER COULD THERE BE?) IS DEFINED THROUGH THE MARKET; AND THEREFORE, IF YOU’RE RICH OR POOR, 1) IT’S YOUR DUE IN LIFE, AND 2) IT’S YOUR OWN FAULT. MANY OF THE MODERN MEGACHURCHES, USUALLY EVANGELICAL PROTESTANT CHRISTIANITY, PREACH THAT TO THIS DAY, AND HEARTLESSLY. THEY EVEN DECLARE THAT IF GOD LOVES YOU, YOU WILL BE “BLESSED” (BECOME RICHER) AS THE SIGN OF HIS OWN INVISIBLE HAND, AND IF YOU AREN’T, IT’S BECAUSE YOU JUST “AREN’T RIGHT WITH GOD.”

THE CHURCH USED TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT HELPER OF THE POOR, AND NOW THEY HELP THEIR MEMBERS MAINLY. ONE HUGE BAPTIST CHURCH IN JACKSONVILLE WILL NOT, SOMEONE TOLD ME, HELP ANYONE WHO DOESN’T JOIN THE CHURCH. SOME OF THEM HAVE CHARITIES, BUT THE FUNDAMENTALIST PROTESTANT CHURCHES THESE DAYS OFTEN DON’T ADVOCATE FOR THE POOR OR HELP MONETARILY. WHAT THEY DO IS PREACH ABOUT HEAVEN AND HELL (THE SOUL IS THE ONLY IMPORTANT PART OF A HUMAN) AND ASK FOR MORE AND MORE MONEY FOR THEIR OWN USES.

SOME NGOS LIKE SPLC, ACLU, SALVATION ARMY, OTHERS WHICH I DON’T KNOW WELL ENOUGH TO NAME, LOCAL HOMELESS SHELTERS, SOME HOSPITALS, SOME HOUSING ORGANIZATIONS ARE CHARITABLE OR LEGAL ADVOCATES FOR THOSE WHO NEED THEM AS THEIR MAIN MISSION. CATHOLIC CHARITIES, HOWEVER, ACTUALLY DO DAILY KEEP THEIR DOORS OPEN FOR PEOPLE IN NEED OF HELP. OF COURSE, THERE ARE PROBLEMS IN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH THAT ARE DISTINCTLY UNHOLY AS WELL, SUCH AS THE RAPE OF INDIVIDUALS, INCLUDING WOMEN – BUT TOO OFTEN IT’S CHILDREN – UNDER THE GUISE OF RENDERING SPIRITUAL AID.

THIS ATLANTIC ARTICLE IS VERY TRUE OF OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD RELIGION, THE MARKET AND THE AMERICAN PEOPLE. THE MARKET AS GOD – SOUND FAMILIAR FROM YOUR CHURCH TRAINING? SOMETHING ABOUT “THE LOVE OF MONEY?” IT’S VERY CLEVERLY AND SERIOUSLY WRITTEN, AND PINPOINTS WHAT IS WRONG WITH OUR VIEW OF THE RESPONSIBILITIES OF CITIZENSHIP, MUCH LESS AN APPROPRIATE USE OF RELIGION. IT ISN’T JUST A PLACE TO WEAR YOUR NEW DRESS; AND LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF MEANS OTHER RACES AS WELL AS WHITES OF OUR OWN PARTICULAR SOCIAL GROUP. WE’VE HAD LIFE TOO EASY, AND WE AREN’T SERIOUS ENOUGH ABOUT A GREAT MANY THINGS. I’M HOPING THAT WILL PASS AS WE COME OUT OF THIS CRISIS PERIOD.


https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1999/03/the-market-as-god/306397/
The Market as God
LIVING IN THE NEW DISPENSATION
HARVEY COX MARCH 1999 ISSUE

A few years ago a friend advised me that if I wanted to know what was going on in the real world, I should read the business pages. Although my lifelong interest has been in the study of religion, I am always willing to expand my horizons; so I took the advice, vaguely fearful that I would have to cope with a new and baffling vocabulary. Instead I was surprised to discover that most of the concepts I ran across were quite familiar.

Expecting a terra incognita, I found myself instead in the land of déjà vu. The lexicon of The Wall Street Journal and the business sections of Time and Newsweek turned out to bear a striking resemblance to Genesis, the Epistle to the Romans, and Saint Augustine's City of God. Behind descriptions of market reforms, monetary policy, and the convolutions of the Dow, I gradually made out the pieces of a grand narrative about the inner meaning of human history, why things had gone wrong, and how to put them right. Theologians call these myths of origin, legends of the fall, and doctrines of sin and redemption. But here they were again, and in only thin disguise: chronicles about the creation of wealth, the seductive temptations of statism, captivity to faceless economic cycles, and, ultimately, salvation through the advent of free markets, with a small dose of ascetic belt tightening along the way, especially for the East Asian economies.

The East Asians' troubles, votaries argue, derive from their heretical deviation from free-market orthodoxy—they were practitioners of "crony capitalism," of "ethnocapitalism," of "statist capitalism," not of the one true faith. The East Asian financial panics, the Russian debt repudiations, the Brazilian economic turmoil, and the U.S. stock market's $1.5 trillion "correction" momentarily shook belief in the new dispensation. But faith is strengthened by adversity, and the Market God is emerging renewed from its trial by financial "contagion." Since the argument from design no longer proves its existence, it is fast becoming a postmodern deity—believed in despite the evidence. Alan Greenspan vindicated this tempered faith in testimony before Congress last October. A leading hedge fund had just lost billions of dollars, shaking market confidence and precipitating calls for new federal regulation. Greenspan, usually Delphic in his comments, was decisive. He believed that regulation would only impede these markets, and that they should continue to be self-regulated. True faith, Saint Paul tells us, is the evidence of things unseen.

Soon I began to marvel at just how comprehensive the business theology is. There were even sacraments to convey salvific power to the lost, a calendar of entrepreneurial saints, and what theologians call an "eschatology"—a teaching about the "end of history." My curiosity was piqued. I began cataloguing these strangely familiar doctrines, and I saw that in fact there lies embedded in the business pages an entire theology, which is comparable in scope if not in profundity to that of Thomas Aquinas or Karl Barth. It needed only to be systematized for a whole new Summa to take shape.

At the apex of any theological system, of course, is its doctrine of God. In the new theology this celestial pinnacle is occupied by The Market, which I capitalize to signify both the mystery that enshrouds it and the reverence it inspires in business folk. Different faiths have, of course, different views of the divine attributes. In Christianity, God has sometimes been defined as omnipotent (possessing all power), omniscient (having all knowledge), and omnipresent (existing everywhere). Most Christian theologies, it is true, hedge a bit. They teach that these qualities of the divinity are indeed there, but are hidden from human eyes both by human sin and by the transcendence of the divine itself. In "light inaccessible" they are, as the old hymn puts it, "hid from our eyes." Likewise, although The Market, we are assured, possesses these divine attributes, they are not always completely evident to mortals but must be trusted and affirmed by faith. "Further along," as another old gospel song says, "we'll understand why."

As I tried to follow the arguments and explanations of the economist-theologians who justify The Market's ways to men, I spotted the same dialectics I have grown fond of in the many years I have pondered the Thomists, the Calvinists, and the various schools of modern religious thought. In particular, the econologians' rhetoric resembles what is sometimes called "process theology," a relatively contemporary trend influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. In this school although God wills to possess the classic attributes, He does not yet possess them in full, but is definitely moving in that direction. This conjecture is of immense help to theologians for obvious reasons. It answers the bothersome puzzle of theodicy: why a lot of bad things happen that an omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient God—especially a benevolent one—would not countenance. Process theology also seems to offer considerable comfort to the theologians of The Market. It helps to explain the dislocation, pain, and disorientation that are the result of transitions from economic heterodoxy to free markets.

Since the earliest stages of human history, of course, there have been bazaars, rialtos, and trading posts—all markets. But The Market was never God, because there were other centers of value and meaning, other "gods." The Market operated within a plethora of other institutions that restrained it. As Karl Polanyi has demonstrated in his classic work The Great Transformation, only in the past two centuries has The Market risen above these demigods and chthonic spirits to become today's First Cause.

Initially The Market's rise to Olympic supremacy replicated the gradual ascent of Zeus above all the other divinities of the ancient Greek pantheon, an ascent that was never quite secure. Zeus, it will be recalled, had to keep storming down from Olympus to quell this or that threat to his sovereignty. Recently, however, The Market is becoming more like the Yahweh of the Old Testament—not just one superior deity contending with others but the Supreme Deity, the only true God, whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals.

Divine omnipotence means the capacity to define what is real. It is the power to make something out of nothing and nothing out of something. The willed-but-not-yet-achieved omnipotence of The Market means that there is no conceivable limit to its inexorable ability to convert creation into commodities. But again, this is hardly a new idea, though it has a new twist. In Catholic theology, through what is called "transubstantiation," ordinary bread and wine become vehicles of the holy. In the mass of The Market a reverse process occurs. Things that have been held sacred transmute into interchangeable items for sale. Land is a good example. For millennia it has held various meanings, many of them numinous. It has been Mother Earth, ancestral resting place, holy mountain, enchanted forest, tribal homeland, aesthetic inspiration, sacred turf, and much more. But when The Market's Sanctus bell rings and the elements are elevated, all these complex meanings of land melt into one: real estate. At the right price no land is not for sale, and this includes everything from burial grounds to the cove of the local fertility sprite. This radical desacralization dramatically alters the human relationship to land; the same happens with water, air, space, and soon (it is predicted) the heavenly bodies.

At the high moment of the mass the priest says, "This is my body," meaning the body of Christ and, by extension, the bodies of all the faithful people. Christianity and Judaism both teach that the human body is made "in the image of God." Now, however, in a dazzling display of reverse transubstantiation, the human body has become the latest sacred vessel to be converted into a commodity. The process began, fittingly enough, with blood. But now, or soon, all bodily organs—kidneys, skin, bone marrow, sperm, the heart itself—will be miraculously changed into purchasable items.

Still, the liturgy of The Market is not proceeding without some opposition from the pews. A considerable battle is shaping up in the United States, for example, over the attempt to merchandise human genes. A few years ago, banding together for the first time in memory, virtually all the religious institutions in the country, from the liberal National Council of Churches to the Catholic bishops to the Christian Coalition, opposed the gene mart, the newest theophany of The Market. But these critics are followers of what are now "old religions," which, like the goddess cults that were thriving when the worship of the vigorous young Apollo began sweeping ancient Greece, may not have the strength to slow the spread of the new devotion.

Occasionally backsliders try to bite the Invisible Hand that feeds them. On October 26, 1996, the German government ran an ad offering the entire village of Liebenberg, in what used to be East Germany, for sale—with no previous notice to its some 350 residents. Liebenberg's citizens, many of them elderly or unemployed, stared at the notice in disbelief. They had certainly loathed communism, but when they opted for the market economy that reunification promised, they hardly expected this. Liebenberg includes a thirteenth-century church, a Baroque castle, a lake, a hunting lodge, two restaurants, and 3,000 acres of meadow and forest. Once a favorite site for boar hunting by the old German nobility, it was obviously entirely too valuable a parcel of real estate to overlook. Besides, having been expropriated by the East German Communist government, it was now legally eligible for sale under the terms of German reunification. Overnight Liebenberg became a living parable, providing an invaluable glimpse of the Kingdom in which The Market's will is indeed done. But the outraged burghers of the town did not feel particularly blessed. They complained loudly, and the sale was finally postponed. Everyone in town realized, however, that it was not really a victory. The Market, like Yahweh, may lose a skirmish, but in a war of attrition it will always win in the end.

Of course, religion in the past has not been reluctant to charge for its services. Prayers, masses, blessings, healings, baptisms, funerals, and amulets have been hawked, and still are. Nor has religion always been sensitive to what the traffic would bear. When, in the early sixteenth century, Johann Tetzel jacked up the price of indulgences and even had one of the first singing commercials composed to push sales ("When the coin into the platter pings, the soul out of purgatory springs"), he failed to realize that he was overreaching. The customers balked, and a young Augustinian monk brought the traffic to a standstill with a placard tacked to a church door.

It would be a lot harder for a Luther to interrupt sales of The Market's amulets today. As the people of Liebenberg discovered, everything can now be bought. Lakes, meadows, church buildings—everything carries a sticker price. But this practice itself exacts a cost. As everything in what used to be called creation becomes a commodity, human beings begin to look at one another, and at themselves, in a funny way, and they see colored price tags. There was a time when people spoke, at least occasionally, of "inherent worth"—if not of things, then at least of persons. The Liebenberg principle changes all that. One wonders what would become of a modern Luther who tried to post his theses on the church door, only to find that the whole edifice had been bought by an American billionaire who reckoned it might look nicer on his estate.

It is comforting to note that the citizens of Liebenberg, at least, were not put on the block. But that raises a good question. What is the value of a human life in the theology of The Market? Here the new deity pauses, but not for long. The computation may be complex, but it is not impossible. We should not believe, for example, that if a child is born severely handicapped, unable to be "productive," The Market will decree its death. One must remember that the profits derived from medications, leg braces, and CAT-scan equipment should also be figured into the equation. Such a cost analysis might result in a close call—but the inherent worth of the child's life, since it cannot be quantified, would be hard to include in the calculation.

It is sometimes said that since everything is for sale under the rule of The Market, nothing is sacred. But this is not quite true. About three years ago a nasty controversy erupted in Great Britain when a railway pension fund that owned the small jeweled casket in which the remains of Saint Thomas à Becket are said to have rested decided to auction it off through Sotheby's. The casket dates from the twelfth century and is revered as both a sacred relic and a national treasure. The British Museum made an effort to buy it but lacked the funds, so the casket was sold to a Canadian. Only last-minute measures by the British government prevented removal of the casket from the United Kingdom. In principle, however, in the theology of The Market, there is no reason why any relic, coffin, body, or national monument—including the Statue of Liberty and Westminster Abbey—should not be listed. Does anyone doubt that if the True Cross were ever really discovered, it would eventually find its way to Sotheby's? The Market is not omnipotent—yet. But the process is under way and it is gaining momentum.

Omniscience is a little harder to gauge than omnipotence. Maybe The Market has already achieved it but is unable—temporarily—to apply its gnosis until its Kingdom and Power come in their fullness. Nonetheless, current thinking already assigns to The Market a comprehensive wisdom that in the past only the gods have known. The Market, we are taught, is able to determine what human needs are, what copper and capital should cost, how much barbers and CEOs should be paid, and how much jet planes, running shoes, and hysterectomies should sell for. But how do we know The Market's will?

In days of old, seers entered a trance state and then informed anxious seekers what kind of mood the gods were in, and whether this was an auspicious time to begin a journey, get married, or start a war. The prophets of Israel repaired to the desert and then returned to announce whether Yahweh was feeling benevolent or wrathful. Today The Market's fickle will is clarified by daily reports from Wall Street and other sensory organs of finance. Thus we can learn on a day-to-day basis that The Market is "apprehensive," "relieved," "nervous," or even at times "jubilant." On the basis of this revelation awed adepts make critical decisions about whether to buy or sell. Like one of the devouring gods of old, The Market—aptly embodied in a bull or a bear—must be fed and kept happy under all circumstances. True, at times its appetite may seem excessive—a $35 billion bailout here, a $50 billion one there—but the alternative to assuaging its hunger is too terrible to contemplate.

The diviners and seers of The Market's moods are the high priests of its mysteries. To act against their admonitions is to risk excommunication and possibly damnation. Today, for example, if any government's policy vexes The Market, those responsible for the irreverence will be made to suffer. That The Market is not at all displeased by downsizing or a growing income gap, or can be gleeful about the expansion of cigarette sales to Asian young people, should not cause anyone to question its ultimate omniscience. Like Calvin's inscrutable deity, The Market may work in mysterious ways, "hid from our eyes," but ultimately it knows best.

Omniscience can sometimes seem a bit intrusive. The traditional God of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer is invoked as one "unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid." Like Him, The Market already knows the deepest secrets and darkest desires of our hearts—or at least would like to know them. But one suspects that divine motivation differs in these two cases. Clearly The Market wants this kind of x-ray omniscience because by probing our inmost fears and desires and then dispensing across-the-board solutions, it can further extend its reach. Like the gods of the past, whose priests offered up the fervent prayers and petitions of the people, The Market relies on its own intermediaries: motivational researchers. Trained in the advanced art of psychology, which has long since replaced theology as the true "science of the soul," the modern heirs of the medieval confessors delve into the hidden fantasies, insecurities, and hopes of the populace.

One sometimes wonders, in this era of Market religion, where the skeptics and freethinkers have gone. What has happened to the Voltaires who once exposed bogus miracles, and the H. L. Menckens who blew shrill whistles on pious humbuggery? Such is the grip of current orthodoxy that to question the omniscience of The Market is to question the inscrutable wisdom of Providence. The metaphysical principle is obvious: If you say it's the real thing, then it must be the real thing. As the early Christian theologian Tertullian* once remarked, "Credo quia absurdum est" ("I believe because it is absurd").

Finally, there is the divinity's will to be omnipresent. Virtually every religion teaches this idea in one way or another, and the new religion is no exception. The latest trend in economic theory is the attempt to apply market calculations to areas that once appeared to be exempt, such as dating, family life, marital relations, and child-rearing. Henri Lepage, an enthusiastic advocate of globalization, now speaks about a "total market." Saint Paul reminded the Athenians that their own poets sang of a God "in whom we live and move and have our being"; so now The Market is not only around us but inside us, informing our senses and our feelings. There seems to be nowhere left to flee from its untiring quest. Like the Hound of Heaven, it pursues us home from the mall and into the nursery and the bedroom.

It used to be thought—mistakenly, as it turns out—that at least the innermost, or "spiritual," dimension of life was resistant to The Market. It seemed unlikely that the interior castle would ever be listed by Century 21. But as the markets for material goods become increasingly glutted, such previously unmarketable states of grace as serenity and tranquillity are now appearing in the catalogues. Your personal vision quest can take place in unspoiled wildernesses that are pictured as virtually unreachable—except, presumably, by the other people who read the same catalogue. Furthermore, ecstasy and spirituality are now offered in a convenient generic form. Thus The Market makes available the religious benefits that once required prayer and fasting, without the awkwardness of denominational commitment or the tedious ascetic discipline that once limited their accessibility. All can now handily be bought without an unrealistic demand on one's time, in a weekend workshop at a Caribbean resort with a sensitive psychological consultant replacing the crotchety retreat master.

Discovering the theology of The Market made me begin to think in a different way about the conflict among religions. Violence between Catholics and Protestants in Ulster or Hindus and Muslims in India often dominates the headlines. But I have come to wonder whether the real clash of religions (or even of civilizations) may be going unnoticed. I am beginning to think that for all the religions of the world, however they may differ from one another, the religion of The Market has become the most formidable rival, the more so because it is rarely recognized as a religion. The traditional religions and the religion of the global market, as we have seen, hold radically different views of nature. In Christianity and Judaism, for example, "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and all that dwell therein." The Creator appoints human beings as stewards and gardeners but, as it were, retains title to the earth. Other faiths have similar ideas. In the Market religion, however, human beings, more particularly those with money, own anything they buy and—within certain limits—can dispose of anything as they choose. Other contradictions can be seen in ideas about the human body, the nature of human community, and the purpose of life. The older religions encourage archaic attachments to particular places. But in The Market's eyes all places are interchangeable. The Market prefers a homogenized world culture with as few inconvenient particularities as possible.

Disagreements among the traditional religions become picayune in comparison with the fundamental differences they all have with the religion of The Market. Will this lead to a new jihad or crusade? I doubt it. It seems unlikely that traditional religions will rise to the occasion and challenge the doctrines of the new dispensation. Most of them seem content to become its acolytes or to be absorbed into its pantheon, much as the old Nordic deities, after putting up a game fight, eventually settled for a diminished but secure status as Christian saints. I am usually a keen supporter of ecumenism. But the contradictions between the world views of the traditional religions on the one hand and the world view of the Market religion on the other are so basic that no compromise seems possible, and I am secretly hoping for a rebirth of polemics.

No religion, new or old, is subject to empirical proof, so what we have is a contest between faiths. Much is at stake. The Market, for example, strongly prefers individualism and mobility. Since it needs to shift people to wherever production requires them, it becomes wrathful when people cling to local traditions. These belong to the older dispensations and—like the high places of the Baalim—should be plowed under. But maybe not. Like previous religions, the new one has ingenious ways of incorporating pre-existing ones. Hindu temples, Buddhist festivals, and Catholic saints' shrines can look forward to new incarnations. Along with native costumes and spicy food, they will be allowed to provide local color and authenticity in what could otherwise turn out to be an extremely bland Beulah Land.

There is, however, one contradiction between the religion of The Market and the traditional religions that seems to be insurmountable. All of the traditional religions teach that human beings are finite creatures and that there are limits to any earthly enterprise. A Japanese Zen master once said to his disciples as he was dying, "I have learned only one thing in life: how much is enough." He would find no niche in the chapel of The Market, for whom the First Commandment is "There is never enough." Like the proverbial shark that stops moving, The Market that stops expanding dies. That could happen. If it does, then Nietzsche will have been right after all. He will just have had the wrong God in mind.


TERTULLIAN*

TERTULLIAN IS THE MOST INTERESTING AND IMPORTANT MAN I’D NEVER HEARD OF BEFORE. THAT’S PROBABLY BECAUSE I’M NOT CATHOLIC. READ THIS. HE PRACTICALLY CREATED THE STRUCTURE OF WHAT WE KNOW AS CHRISTIANITY. OF COURSE, THERE WERE THEN AND ARE STILL DOZENS AND DOZENS OF BELIEFS THAT SURVIVED THOUGH THEY WERE DEFINITELY OUT OF THE MAINSTREAM. THE CHURCH FATHERS CALL THEM HERESIES. MY OWN RELIGION IS ONE OF THOSE, UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISM.

I LIKE IT BECAUSE IT DOES NOT REQUIRE ME TO BELIEVE ANYTHING LIKE “GOD IN THREE PERSONS.” THE HERESIES ARE JUST THROWBACKS TO THE TIME WHEN RELIGION WAS A PRIVATE AFFAIR, AND SPECIFIC BELIEFS, INCLUDING SUCH AS TESTS OF FAITH LIKE SNAKE HANDLING IN RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES, ARE ACCEPTABLE IF THEY ARE TRULY HELD BELIEFS. SO MANY OF THOSE HERESIES WERE ANCIENT, LITERALLY PREHISTORIC. THEY ALSO, SIMPLY PUT, SOUND LIKE “STORIES,” RATHER THAN “TRUTH.” I THINK JESUS WANTS US TO CARE ABOUT OTHERS ENOUGH TO HELP WHEN WE CAN, AND NOT TO INSURE THAT WE GO TO HEAVEN, BUT JUST BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT WE OUGHT TO DO!

RELIGION IS A PERSONAL BELIEF, AND SHOULD NOT BE A BIG PUBLIC SHOW OF EMOTION AND PIETY, WITH THE VIEWPOINTS HIGHLY ORDERED INTO ACCEPTABLE AND UNACCEPTABLE. “IF YOU’RE WITH US, YOU WILL BELIEVE THIS; AND IF YOU DON’T YOU WILL END UP IN A LAKE OF FIRE. TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT!”

I HAVE NEVER FORGOTTEN ONE OF JESUS’ SAYINGS, THAT WE SHOULDN’T PRAY IN PUBLIC “TO BE SEEN OF MEN,” BUT “GO INTO YOUR CLOSET,” AND PRAY “IN SPIRIT AND IN TRUTH.” HE HAD UNPLEASANT THINGS TO SAY ABOUT THE RULE-BOUND PHARISEES, SO I BELIEVE HE WILL FORGIVE US FOR TRYING TO THINK OUT FOR OURSELVES WHAT REALLY IS A VIRTUE AND WHAT IS A CHARACTER FLAW – WHICH SOMETIMES IN MY VIEW DOES AMOUNT TO EVIL. CRUELTY AND EXTREME SELFISHNESS TO THE POINT OF SOMETHING LIKE CHEATING OTHERS IN A SCAM IN ORDER TO GET THEIR MONEY. UNFORTUNATELY, “THE MARKET” DOESN’T PRECLUDE ALL KINDS OF DECEITFULNESS IF YOU MAKE MONEY IN DOING IT. YOU’LL STILL BE LIKELY TO KEEP YOUR MONEY, UNLESS OF COURSE YOU DO ONE OF THE THINGS THAT HAVE BEEN CRIMINALIZED. PAINFULLY, THE MARKET DOESN’T PUNISH THOSE THINGS AUTOMATICALLY, EITHER. EVEN IF SOMETHING IS ILLEGAL, YOU STILL HAVE TO GET CAUGHT WITH THE SMOKING GUN IN YOUR HAND. THAT’S WHY I SOMETIMES THINK THAT BEING LUCKY IS VERY, VERY IMPORTANT.

ONE OF THE REASONS I COULD FIND IT HARDER TO BELIEVE THAT “THE MARKET” EITHER “EMBODIES, OR IS” A GOD, IS THAT IT TOTALLY LACKS WARMTH AND CONCERN OVER THE NEEDS OF PEOPLE, AND AS A SOURCE OF SPIRITUAL REFLECTION, IT FALLS FLAT. YET, CONSERVATIVES DO ASSIGN SPIRITUAL OR PERSONAL VIRTUE ASPECTS TO IT. TO THEM IT’S AN IRREVOCABLE MEASURE OF “HARD WORK,” INTELLIGENCE, AND GOOD BREEDING STOCK. “YES, YOUNG SIR. YOU MAY HAVE MY DAUGHTER’S HAND IN MARRIAGE!”

IF YOU STILL AREN’T CONCERNED ENOUGH TO TRY TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT OUR NATION’S SHARP JERK TO THE RIGHT UNDER THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, READ THIS HUFFINGTON POST BLOG BY JOHN SANBONMATSU. IT’S ONE OF THE MOST BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN ESSAYS I’VE SEEN, AND ITS’ FOCUS IS ON THE MODERN CONUNDRUM IN WHICH WE FIND OURSELVES TRAPPED. WE NEED TO BREAK OUT OF THIS EVIL WIZARDRY THAT HAS CHANGED US OVERNIGHT TO A POPULACE WHO NO LONGER REVERE THE DESIRES AND GOALS OF DEMOCRATIC AND CARING THOUGHT AND BEHAVIOR, NOR THE NEEDS OF OUR CITIZENS.

WORST, WE HAVE ACCEPTED THE EVALUATION OF LIFE BY MONEY AND STATUS INSTEAD OF HUMAN VALUES. THAT IS NOT ONLY DEEPLY WRONG, IT’S DANGEROUS. IF WE WANT TO BE “GREAT AGAIN,” WE’LL HAVE TO FIND OUR WAY OUT OF THIS BOX OF WHAT I CAN ONLY CALL STUPIDITY; AND MAKE SOME SERIOUS LAWS ABOUT WHO CAN AND CAN’T BECOME PRESIDENT – FOR A START. WE’VE ROMANTICIZED OUR GOVERNMENT RATHER THAN PROTECTING IT; AND REPLACED IDEALS OF HONEST AND BENEFICENT SOCIETY WITH “PATRIOTISM,” AND “BREEDING.” THAT’S TOO CLOSE TO “BLOOD AND IRON,” FOR ME.

A JUICY QUOTATION FROM THE WRITER IN THIS NEXT ONE – “EACH DAY HAS BROUGHT SOME NEW ATTACK ON OUR DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTIONS, SOME NEW SHAMELESS TISSUE OF LIES ISSUED BY THE TRUMPISTS, SOME NEW ATTEMPT TO CIRCUMVENT THE NATION’S PRINCIPLES AND LAWS. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT DEATH EATERS DO.”

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/death-eaters-in-the-white_b_14629890.html
THE BLOG 02/17/2017 12:47 pm ET Updated Feb 06, 2018
Death Eaters In The White House
By John Sanbonmatsu

Last January, after Katrina Pierson, Donald Trump’s spokeswoman at the time, Tweeted a blatantly racist message about President Obama and Mitt Romney, J.K. Rowling Tweeted back, “Death Eaters walk among us.”

What a difference a year makes. Death Eaters not only walk among us—now they occupy the White House.

In the Rowling’s Harry Potter books, a Death Eater is someone who hates democracy, equality, and human rights. Death Eaters advocate racial purity, seeing other peoples and races as ugly, inferior, and dangerous. Death Eaters have no respect for the truth, and consequently don’t understand the value of a free press—which they despise.

Being sociopaths, Death Eaters are free of the normal constraints of empathy and conscience, and so give free reign to their aggressive instincts towards others. Death Eaters are aroused by and drawn to the vulnerability of others, the way sharks are aroused by the smell of blood. Death Eaters like to bully and intimidate people, particularly those they perceive as weaker than themselves. Violence, war, and even torture are attractive to Death Eaters.

If you had any doubt that Donald Trump is a Death Eater, consider all that the Groper in Chief and his circle of Dementors have done in the space of just three short weeks:

*Banned over 200 million people, from seven Muslim countries, from entering the US.

*Banned all refugees from settling in the US.

*Revoked the visas of 60-100,000 people, stranding thousands across the globe and filling millions of immigrants and alien residents with fear and anxiety.

*Insulted, threatened, or bullied the nations of Iran, Mexico, Germany, and Australia.

*Floated the idea of removing federal protections for gay and transgender people, in the name of “religious freedom” (before backing down).

*Appointed the CIA officer and war criminal who once oversaw torture at a “black site” in Thailand, as the new Deputy Director of the CIA.

*Kicked the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence off the National Security Council, replacing them with Trump’s chief advisor, Stephen Bannon—an ultra-rightist with no political experience.

*Authorized a botched Special Forces raid on an alleged Al-Qaida camp in Yemen, killing dozens of people, including perhaps ten children. An 8-year-old girl named Nawar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was shot in the back of the neck. She bled to death over the course of two hours.

But these are only the highlights. Each day has brought some new attack on our democratic institutions, some new shameless tissue of lies issued by the Trumpists, some new attempt to circumvent the nation’s principles and laws. Because that’s what Death Eaters do.

Sigmund Freud speculated that living organisms have a “death drive” in addition to a life-drive—a primordial instinct for self-destruction and self-extinction. Death Eaters have the death drive in spades. The Nazis (upon whom Rowling based the Death Eaters in Harry Potter) are the paradigmatic case. Hitler not only murdered European Jewry and unleashed a terrible war that claimed tens of millions of lives, he also led his own nation into an abyss of mass destruction and moral shame. Then he too self-destructed. Alone in his bunker with his “alternative facts”—and bitterly blaming the German people for having let him down—Hitler shot himself.

Like earlier forms of fascism, Trumpism too seems governed by an unerring instinct for national self-combustion. There is something fantastically self-destructive and delusional about the Trump-Bannon-Pence troika as they sow fear and hatred across the world, a kind of slouching towards Götterdämmerung.

Veteran political elites are aghast at the international wreckage already piling up at Trump’s feet, warning of the incalculable damage that Trump is doing to the American “brand.” Indeed, the more aggressively Trump acts to promote his America First ideology—gutting the State Department diplomatic corps, pulling in the welcome mat for immigrants, alienating traditional allies, reneging on international human rights treaties, etc.—the more he undermines American hegemony and sets the stage for the collapse of the US Imperium.

Behind this paradox lies the irrationality of the world capitalist system, which is rapidly destroying the conditions of all planetary life. Trumpism is merely capitalism in its purest, most virulent form, signifying the collapse of all distinctions between life and death, between persons and things. The millionaires and billionaires serving in Trump’s Cabinet share his vision of the total dominion of capital over workers, animals, and the natural world. That is why they want to obliterate the EPA and to deregulate Wall Street. Like capitalism itself, which has no allegiances or values of its own, they are fundamentally nihilists.

The greatest of these nihilists is Stephen Bannon, who has explicitly blamed the breakdown of society and the growth of radical Islamism on the “crisis of capitalism.” But Bannon—a former Goldman Sachs executive—wants to egg the crisis on, not resolve it. Like earlier fascists, he would leverage global instabilities into an extreme nationalism, chiefly by demonizing ethnic, racial, and religious minorities.

Disturbingly, millions of Americans are coming along for the ride. Last week, after the President’s unconstitutional Executive Order targeting Muslims, refugees, and immigrants, a poll found that a plurality of Americans (49%) approved of his actions. This suggests that whatever else Trump is, he is not merely an ugly anomaly or rogue element in our political system, but an excrescence of the social body itself. The success of Trumpism suggests that the death drive has begun to predominate over society at large, turning the citizenry’s healthy life instincts and passions into tools of repression and destruction.

We should be beyond scared. Unlike the Death Eaters in Rowling’s fiction, the ones ensconced at the White House are real, and they now control the most powerful military and surveillance machine in the history of the world—including 7,000 nuclear weapons. That means that Trump, if he so chose, could unilaterally order the destruction of the whole living world in the space of 60 minutes—and there would be nothing any of us could do about it.

The fact that our system has so centralized political and economic authority that it has now placed a world-destroying power in the hands of a single madman reveals the terrifying irrationality of the “death-eating”* system more generally. The problem isn’t just Trump—it’s the pathological society that has given monstrous birth to him.

John Sanbonmatsu
Writer, philosopher, and magician.


DEATH-EATING, DEATH EATERS*
FROM HARRY POTTER.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Eater
Death Eater
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Death Eaters are fictional characters in the Harry Potter series of novels and films. They are a group of wizards and witches, led by the dark wizard Voldemort (Tom Marvolo Riddle), who seek to purify the Wizarding community by eliminating the Muggle-borns (wizards or witches born to non-magical parents). They also try to create a new order through the Ministry of Magic and spread fear throughout the Wizarding community by terrorising and killing important officials and other enemies of the Death Eaters, chiefly the members of the Order of the Phoenix.

Death Eaters recognise one another by the Dark Mark branded on their left forearm, a sign created by Voldemort to summon him instantly to them or vice versa. Their typical attire includes black hooded robes and masks. The Death Eaters, as a group, first appeared in the novel Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, although individual members of the group, such as Lucius Malfoy, Peter Pettigrew, and Severus Snape, had appeared in earlier books in the series.

Synopsis

“ . . . . Around 10 years after the Death Eaters first surfaced, a Seer named Sybill Trelawney made a prophecy about a boy who would have the power to defeat Voldemort forever. The prophecy could have referred to two different boys, Harry Potter or Neville Longbottom; however, Voldemort chose Harry as said in the prophecy, that "the Dark Lord would mark him as his equal". As Voldemort was a half-blood, he chose his "equal", Harry, whose mother was a Muggle-born witch, instead of Neville, who came from a long line of pure-blooded wizards . . . .

Ideology

Voldemort's Death Eaters practise illegal and dangerous spells known as dark magic. Their ideology is of racial supremacy. They believe wizards are, as a genealogy book within the story phrases it, "Nature's Nobility"; other magical creatures and the non-magical are inferior and should be subjugated. Within the wizarding community, only those who are born to wizard parents are worthy of magical power, despite the fact that parentage does not in fact determine who possess such powers.

They categorise wizards according to blood purity; "pure bloods", or wizard borns, out-rank "half-bloods" (mixed parentage) and "mudbloods", a derogatory name for those born to non-magical parents (muggles); though mostly they seek complete power and control over the entire Wizarding world, wishing to restrict leadership to a small band of pure-bloods. The Death Eaters not only seek the restoration of pure-blood rule over the Wizarding community, but also the eventual subjugation of the Muggle community under Wizarding rule.


BESIDES THE OBVIOUS COMPARISONS WITH THE CHRISTIAN CEREMONY OF THE EUCHARIST AND OF COURSE ALSO THE DESPICABLE DEEDS OF THE NAZIS OF WORLD WAR II, ALONG WITH EVEN MORE INTERESTING STUFF, LIKE WHAT IS A DEATH EATER, REALLY? AND HOW DO THEY “EAT” AN INCORPOREAL CONCEPT. ALSO, FOR THE BELIEFS OF THE MYSTERIOUS “DEATH EATERS,” GO TO -- https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/31661/why-were-death-eaters-called-death-eaters. LIKE SOME OTHER SCIENCE FICTION, IT’S A WAY OF INTRODUCING AN IDEA OF BASIC MORALITY INTO THE YOUNG PEOPLE OF MODERN TIMES. THEY READ HARRY POTTER (THE ORIGIN OF THE MODERN DEATH EATER SCIFI INTERNET MYTHOLOGY) AND ABSORB SOME INSIGHT FROM IT ALONG WITH THE THRILLING SUPERHERO’S EXPLOITS.

“PERFECT OBAMA'S DAD BORN IN AFRICA, MITT ROMNEY'S DAD BORN IN MEXICO. ANY PURE BREEDS LEFT? #CNNDEBATE” THESE ARE THE WORDS OF KATRINA PIERSON, A WORSHIPPER IN THE TRUMP CULT. IF THIS TWEET DOESN’T DISGUST YOU, STOP READING NOW, BECAUSE YOU AREN’T MY AUDIENCE. GO WATCH TRUMP’S PERSONAL TV STATION. I WOULDN’T WANT YOU TO BESMIRCH YOURSELF WITH ANY FAKE NEWS.

WHAT IS PIERSON’S PERSONAL HISTORY? WHEN I SEE SOMETHING LIKE THIS, I ALWAYS WANT TO KNOW WHO THEY ARE, AND HOW MUCH INFLUENCE THEY MAY HAVE IN THE WORLD. FOLLOWING THIS, READ ALSO THE STORY OF THE BOWLING GREEN MASSACRE.

https://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/trump-spokeswoman-katrina-pierson-has-a-long-history-of-outrageously-racist-tweets/
Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson has a long history of outrageously racist tweets
Bethania Palma Markus
23 JAN 2016 AT 23:11 ET

Trump spokesperson Katrina Pierson on CNN -- (CNN screengrab)

The Twitter feed of GOP front runner Donald Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, reveals a lot of questionable material, according to Mediaite.

THE TWEETS GO BACK YEARS, BUT THEIR CONTENT MAY COME AS NO SURPRISE, CONSIDERING PIERSON HAS DEFENDING [SIC] TRUMP’S PROPOSED BAN OF MUSLIM PEOPLE FROM ENTERING THE UNITED STATES BY SAYING, “SO WHAT, THEY’RE MUSLIM.”

During the 2012 election, in which Republican Mitt Romney faced off against an incumbent President Barack Obama, Pierson tweeted that both men were not “pure bred.”


Katrina Pierson
✔
@KatrinaPierson
Perfect Obama's dad born in Africa, Mitt Romney's dad born in Mexico. Any pure breeds left? #CNNDebate

9:06 PM - Jan 19, 2012
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4,665 people are talking about this
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She also tweeted that the choice for president that year was between a “Mormon or Jihadi.” Many on the right have accused Obama of secretly being a Muslim.

After wearing a necklace made of bullets on CNN in December, Pierson said she’d wear a fetus next time.


Katrina Pierson
✔
@KatrinaPierson
Maybe I'll wear a fetus next time & bring awareness to 50 million aborted people that will never ger to be on Twitter https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/682031786843504640 …

11:10 PM - Dec 29, 2015
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In 2013, she made another racist tweet, calling President Obama an outdated term used before the Civil Rights era.


Katrina Pierson
✔
@KatrinaPierson
@TrillTitan This corrupt country has a head Negro in charge. What is he doing for blk children? He's helping everybody else, Why? @DOTCOM_MOM

4:42 PM - Mar 3, 2013
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Oddly, it seems Pierson supported Trump’s rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz before she was hired to do public relations for Trump.


View image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on TwitterView image on Twitter

Oliver Darcy
✔
@oliverdarcy
Trump spokeswoman @KatrinaPierson repeatedly expressed support for Cruz’s campaign — last year.

12:06 AM - Jan 23, 2016
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Pierson responded to the debacle by implying the tweets had been made up — a strange position to take, Mediaite points out, because the tweets are still on her timeline.


NEXT ON RAW STORY >
Kushner is making a hotel deal with the Trumps — and that’s why he’s still in the White House: report



ANOTHER TRUMP PERSONNEL BLUNDER WAS HIRING KELLYANNE CONWAY AS AN ADVISER. IF PEOPLE LIKE HER ARE HIS ADVISERS, THAT MAKES SOME OF THE NEWS STORIES UNDERSTANDABLE – NO LESS SHOCKING, BUT UNDERSTANDABLE.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/03/kellyanne-conway-refugees-bowling-green-massacre-never-happened
Trump travel ban
Kellyanne Conway blames refugees for 'Bowling Green massacre' that never happened

VIDEO -- Donald Trump’s senior adviser uses fictitious incident to justify US president’s travel ban, :20 DURATION.

Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Donald Trump, has come in for criticism and ridicule after blaming two Iraqi refugees for a massacre that never happened.

Conway, the US president’s former campaign manager who has frequently faced the press to defend his controversial moves, cited the fictitious “Bowling Green massacre” in an interview in which she backed the travel ban imposed on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries.

Interviewed by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball programme on Thursday evening, Conway compared the executive order issued by Trump in his first week in the White House to what she described as a six-month ban imposed by his predecessor Barack Obama.

This claim has been debunked by commentators who have pointed out that the 2011 action was a pause on the processing of refugees from Iraq after two Iraqi nationals were arrested over a failed attempt to send money and weapons to al-Qaida in Iraq.

‘Bowling Green massacre’: debunking the attack that never happened

Conway told Matthews: “I bet it’s brand new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalised and they were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green massacre.

“Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”

Trump defends chaotic foreign policy: 'We're going to straighten it out, OK?'

It didn’t get covered, many are now pointing out, because there was no such massacre.

The two Iraqi men arrested in 2011 did live in Bowling Green, Kentucky, and are currently serving life sentences for federal terrorism offences. But there was no massacre, nor were they accused of planning one. The US department of justice, announcing their convictions in 2012, said: “Neither was charged with plotting attacks within the United States.”

Analysis by the Cato Institute of terrorist attacks on US soil between 1975 and 2015 found that foreign nationals from the seven countries targeted by Trump’s travel ban – Iran, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Sudan, Libya and Somalia – have killed no Americans.

Following the Conway interview, some social media users pointed out that false rumours about a Halloween massacre had circulated in several universities, including Ohio’s Bowling Green state university, in 1998.

But the likelihood that Conway had Kentucky in mind was bolstered when that state’s senator Rand Paul also made a variation of her false claim. In a separate interview with MSNBC, Paul referred to “the attempted bombing in Bowling Green, where I live”.


Joe Sonka 😐
@joesonka
Replying to @joesonka
Rand Paul: "...the attempted bombing in Bowling Green, where I live."
(Prosecutor said there was no attempt or even plot to bomb in America)

10:24 PM - Feb 2, 2017
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Conway had already prompted astonishment by describing comments by White House spokesman Sean Spicer that Trump’s inauguration crowd “was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period” as “alternative facts”.

“You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and they’re giving – Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” Conway told NBC last week.

Matthews did not press Conway on her Bowling Green massacre claim in the interview, and she has not yet responded to reports that she misrepresented the events of 2011.



WHEN BIZARRE MYSTICISM OR NEGATIVE EMOTION RULE LOGIC, THEREFORE WARPING NATIONAL POLICY DECISIONS, SOME OF THE WORST EFFECTS ON PEOPLE EMERGE. I AM THINKING OF FASCISM AND NAZISM, HOWEVER THERE ARE ANY NUMBER OF OTHER EXAMPLES. THE GENOCIDES IN SUDAN AND KOSOVO AND OTHER PLACES AND TIMES ARE OF THIS TYPE.

WHAT I FEAR IS A TIME WHEN PEOPLE (INDIVIDUALS OR GROUPS) EITHER HAVE NEVER DEVELOPED A CONSCIENCE OR HAVE LOST IT SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY DUE TO DESPERATION OR DESPAIR. DEEP POVERTY, OR “BAD INFLUENCES” CAN DO THAT, OR STARK AND SHOCKING CHANGES INCIRCUMSTANCE, AS WHEN THE SOUTH POURED ITS' HOPE INTO THE CIVIL WAR IN AN EFFORT TO ACHIEVE ECONOMIC PARITY WITH THE BURGEONING NORTH, AND THEN AT THE END OF A HORRIFIC WAR, WE'RE DISPLACED TOTALLY. WERE THEY ANGRY? THEY WERE DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED, AND HATE-FILLED, BUT STILL PROUD, SO THEY FIERCELY HELD ONTO THEIR GLORY YEARS, AS THEY SAW THEM. I MUST SAY THAT TOO FEW SOUTHERNERS, EVEN THOSE WHO WEREN'T SLAVEOWNERS, CARED GREATLY ABOUT BLACK PEOPLE. THE PROBLEM IS WHEN THE SITUATION PRODUCES A PERSON WHO, FOR WHATEVER REASON, HAS NO FIRMLY PLACED CONSCIENCE OR WARMTH WIHTIN THEM, IS EXPOSED TO A LEADER WHO ENCOURAGES THAT DESTRUCTIVE WORLDVIEW IN ORDER TO ATTAIN CONTROL OF A SIZEABLE SEGMENT OF SOCIETY. IF THE ALIENATED INDIVIDUALS ARE SUFFICIENTLY POPULOUS, MENTALLY PLIABLE, AND AGGRESSIVE, THEY CAN CHANGE THE CULTURE OF A WHOLE NATION IN A HEARTBEAT. THIS HAS BEEN COMING FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS, BUT TRUMP’S SHOCKING PERFORMANCES IN HIS CAMPAIGN AND EVEN NOW ARE A CATALYST. HE CONTINUES TO INCITE AN UPROAR SOMETIMES, UNDOUBTEDLY FOR THE PLEASURE OF IT, AND OF COURSE TO SOLIDIFY HIS CONTROL OVER THE RADICAL RIGHTISTS WHO ARE LOYAL TO HIM NOW. IT HAS HAPPENED NUMEROUS TIMES IN HISTORY, AND WE ARE IN ANOTHER SUCH TIME. WE MUSTN'T BE PASSIVE ABOUT IT. WE MUST RESIST PRESIDENT TRUMP AND KEEP ABREAST OF THE NEWS, IN ORDER TO BE PREPARED FOR WORSE CHANGE WHICH MAY COME.